[splat-uhs-FEER-ik] adj. The kind of rebound that doesn't go exactly as planned.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

My travel tends to follow the trajectory
of your average commercial airline flight.
The beginning is all takeoff and ascent because I’m usually excited
about the destination. Once I get there,
I do whatever I came to do. That part is smooth and uneventful most of the time, like being at cruising altitude. Where things go wrong, in my experience, is the return trip. (Don't believe me? Check out this.) It’s my personal descent, often ending in a very bumpy landing.

Recently I had to make a trip to
Boston. The day of my departure couldn’t
have started any better. The weather was
perfect, with no trace of superstorms. Even the normally nasty morning rush hour
showed a nice streak: I made it to National Airport in twenty minutes and with
time to spare for my 10:30 flight.

I walked through the terminal and saw
an unusually large crowd gathered at one of the gates in the distance. As I got closer, the group burst into
applause, and I quickly understood why: A plane full of World War II veterans had
arrived.

They were unloading to great
fanfare and I joined just as the saxophonist in an eight-piece band played the trademark opening riff of "In The Mood." The
scene moved me to tears, and also to a huge grin. I was in the mood, all right. I watched and listened for five or six more
songs—these passengers moved at a pace that would’ve allowed the band to do a
full set—boarded a plane, and headed north.

Once I had done everything I wanted
and needed to in the Boston area, I phoned a cab company to arrange a ride. The dispatcher said the cab would pick me up at
6:00 p.m. Plenty of time to make the 30 minute ride to Logan and catch my 8:00
flight.

When the cab hadn’t shown up by 6:15,
I knew I’d dropped out of the clouds and begun the descent.

Ten minutes later a white minivan pulled
up. It had no sign so I stayed put. A couple seconds later the passenger door
slid open and a voice that belonged to a woman I couldn’t see said, “Ya goin’
to the airport?” My ears detected a
southern accent when she said “airport.”

She started to make small talk before
I even closed the door and my accent hunch was confirmed.

“Ah offered to pick you up ‘cause ah gotta go see my boyfriend after this and the airport is kinda on the way.” I was confused. Neither she nor the vehicle looked very
official. Had the cab company handed me
off to some sort of carpool?

I didn’t have time to ask because she
kept talking, loudly, while country music blared from the speakers.

“Ah just moved back up here from
Alabama.” This explained the origin of her accent and the reason why she had
the heat set to ‘blast furnace’ despite her heavy coat and the fifty degree
temperatures outside.

We didn’t get far before traffic
halted our progress. It did not have the same effect on her soliloquy,
unfortunately.

“Do ya like country music? Ah do. In fact my country station in Alabama ran a
telethon last year for sick kids. They had a contest for a meet an’ greet with
Shania Twain and ah won it. Look at all these red lights. Ah got a whole coffee
in me, honey, so if we don’t start movin’ ah’m gonna have to pull over an’ pee.”

I felt like I was watching “Honey Boo
Boo Finds A Job.”

It was 6:45 and we were nowhere near
the airport. I needed an out. Based on the temperature inside the car,
spontaneous combustion seemed like a viable option. I didn’t know how long that might take so I
decided to use a work defense instead.

“Will it bother you if I make a call?”

“Aw no, you go right ahead, honey,”
she said, cranking up the radio. I found this very considerate. It ensured that neither of us heard my
conversation and also guaranteed that we didn’t miss it when Tricia Yearwood
slaughtered “Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.”

I kept my call brief. The cabbie’s phone rang moments later, which
I figured out only when she turned off the radio. Some calls deserve that kind of
reverence. At 7:05 we encountered
another wall of brake lights.

She hung up and said, “Ah ain’t never seen it like this, traffic all goin’ into
the city. Must be a car’s on fire.”

A tiny part of me wanted to know why bumper-to-bumper
traffic could only mean a car fire (and if so, why the Beltway wasn’t engulfed
in flames eight hours a day). I couldn’t
bring myself to ask.

We’d been sitting in silence for eight
or nine seconds when she pointed to the right. I looked over and saw a train
stopped at a platform. “The train stops
right there,” she said. I didn’t have a response to that.

At about 7:10, we approached the
entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

“We’re goin' into a tunnel now,” she
said. “There’s water on top of it.” Then it dawned on me: I hadn’t landed in a
random carpool after all; it was an
airport shuttle for hypothermic blind people. It all made sense.

As I was preparing to strip down to my
underwear, an airport-only lane appeared, and by 7:15 we had reached the
terminal. Though I didn’t have time for
the IV drip I desperately needed, I did reach my gate in time for the final
boarding call.

The descent was short and steep this
time, but at least I stuck the landing.

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About Me

I turned 40 in June of 2011. Shortly thereafter I realized I needed to end my 10-month marriage. Making this decision was difficult --you don't exactly brag about being married a Kardashian length of time-- but the mechanics of executing this huge fresh start (and a whole series of related little ones) proved even more daunting. My attempts to bounce back --both recent and not--haven't always ricocheted off the proverbial wall with the gusto I envisioned. Sometimes they hit it with a resounding "splat" and slide down before landing in a heap on the dirt. This blog chronicles adventures in splats --largely mine but guest splatters will be featured as well--with the hope that the posts will evoke laughter, provoke the occasional thought, and prove that even the messiest ones usually work out just fine. Eventually.

Have You Ever Splat-ted? Tell me about it!

Have a good "splat" story to share? Email me at splatospheric@gmail.com. (Names and other incriminating details can be changed to protect the splatted, of course!) I'd like to write about other people's adventures as well as my own. While I'm vain enough to have started a blog, I have just enough self awareness to know that not everyone will find me as interesting as I do. There's simply no accounting for taste.